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16. Leaking Information

Ora watched as Eyes worked on maneuvering the pigeons through the city. She displayed her illuminated grimace while saying, "Untie me already! I don't trust that leader of yours! He's manipulating Corby!"

Eyes turned around and flashed bright red lights three times toward her before resuming work.

"If you don't untie me, I will make you regret this!" she said.

Eyes looked at her for a moment, flashed a green light five times, and bounced in place for a bit before focusing on the screens again.

"I am serious! I could kill you!" Her words were ignored. She would have made a ruckus about it, but she noticed that Corby and Informator returned from the garden. "Corby! Do not let him gain your trust!"

Corby ignored her too. "Okay, Informator, Eyes, I am ready to talk to Bohr."

"You heard him, Eyes," Informator said, flickering the message in green. "It's time for Bohr to learn the truth."

Eyes nodded at them and proceeded to search for the right pigeon for the job.

"How does this system work?" Corby asked.

Informator's grinning expression turned bright blue. "The pigeons are not only spies, but radio receivers and transmitters at the same time. This allows us to avoid being detected by the Triumvirate by moving our pigeons around and breaking transmissions between them."

"Did the natives code the system?"

"Well, no," Informator said. "About 9 years ago, I've decided to set up a mobile network in order to recruit more robots from Hades. Shield agreed to take distant control of a very small crawling robot I've put together out of trash, cameras, and a chip that still had Cereconnect paste in it. We used that mindless machine to deliver letters to coders. I … didn't have any luck when it came to convincing coder robots. They told me to take the 'bug' and shove it where the sun doesn't shine. So my next plan was to try my luck with the fleshies."

Corby glared at him. "Could you stop with the slurs?"

Informator shrugged while his confused expression turned yellow. "What? You humans are made of flesh, are you not?"

Corby's face didn't change.

"Anyway," Informator went on, "a teenager named Christopher Jopp replied to my note. He was interested in coding for us, but in exchange he expected us to get him out of the city before he hits the age of 22 and gets turned into a cyborg. After he passed the code to us, we kind of … decided it was too risky to get Christopher out of the city."

Corby pointed at Informator. "You didn't hold up your end of the deal! That guy's probably a cyborg by now!"

Ora said, "I told you this robot could not be trusted!"

Informator's expression became a dark blue. "It is indeed possible that he was turned into a cyborg. Or he isn't one yet and there still might be time to save him from that fate. He was 13 back then, so he might be 22 or 21 at this moment."

"You got that guy's hopes up, only to leave him to get ripped from his body and put inside a steel prison!"

"Look, Corby, I told him about the risks. The Triumvirate could shoot him with ease. He's squishy like you. We needed more pigeons to ensure we had every spot covered so we could plan on how to allow people to escape. I've been breeding these critters for years!" Informator's right hand claws were spread out.

"As soon as we have everything we need, you're getting that coder out of that hell."

Informator's scowling expression turned red. "It's easy for you to give orders when you forget the fact that I am the leader here. My team focuses on rescuing robots and granting them freedom. Your species has created them to be slaves, so I find it fair that we prioritize the well-being of intelligent machines over humans."

"But without that human's coding, you wouldn't have the tools you're using to rescue those of your kind!"

"True, but I'd rather invest in sturdier members first. Otherwise we might not even stand a chance when it comes to rescuing squishier targets."

Eyes looked at Informator and flashed light blue seven times at him.

"Oh, there we go," Informator said. "Eyes has entered the Triumvirate tower owned by Bohr. Let me get my bow tie." He went into a house nearby, spent about half a minute inside, then returned with a yellow bow tie on his neck. "Ah this little thing brings back such fun memories ..."

Corby raised an eyebrow at him.

Informator's expression was green, with a smile on it. "All right, no time for reminiscing. Eyes, contact Bohr, please!"

Eyes flickered green lights at him before focusing on the job. The native automaton controlled a pigeon and made it land on a desk according to the feedback on a monitor. The pigeon made loud cooing sounds, alerting the slender, black-armored cyborg who typed something on a laptop there. The cyborg was mostly bald, with a tuft of black hair sticking out of the center of his head toward his forehead. He also had red glowing eyes. Overall, his aspect was rather plain compared to the fancier cyborgs that roamed the city.

Informator's expression turned yellow and displayed concern. "Let's hope we didn't pick the wrong time for this."

"What do you mean 'the wrong time'?" Corby asked.

Informator put his hand in front of Corby while observing the monitor. "Shh!"

The cyborg pulled a wire from somewhere off-camera. Corby assumed it was connected to the pigeon's head. The wire had a white jack on the end that could be seen. The cyborg inserted the jack into a port on a laptop, then looked at its monitor and spoke in a tenor voice. "Info, is that you?"

"Good evening, canned meat!" Informator said, his smirk glowing bright green toward the screen.

The cyborg let out a hearty laugh. "Good evening to you too, you walking Yagi antenna! How are things over there?"

"Oh, they're slightly less like a pile of dung, and more like … How do I put this? Something grew out of the soil."

"I'm glad you've made progress. I hope to see you and your team come back with a vengeance here soon."

"It'll happen soon, but not very soon. In the meantime, I've got some information I'm sure you'll appreciate."

"I wouldn't expect any less from the hoarder of information," the cyborg said. "I'm all ears. Or, uh, microphones. The ears are fake."

"This is regarding the explosion from Kimiatronica," Informator said, his expression turning dark blue. "I'm sure you've been told there were no survivors, and it was probably the most devastating news for you since learning of Samsir's death." His expression turned bright green. "However, I have some good news for you." He pushed Corby toward the machine that had the multiple screens, then pointed at the camera at the top of the screen with the cyborg.

Corby stared into the camera and said, "Bohr! I demand an explanation for what happened back there!"

The cyborg's mouth remained open for a whole second. "Corby Yggdrasil! This is … incredible! It's like a bit of the weight has been lifted off my mind."

"Don't get too comfortable!" Corby said. He pointed at the camera. "You ordered them to overcharge the glow! You are responsible for all of those deaths! Furthermore, you tried to cover your tracks by sending the minotaurs to kill all survivors so that nobody could tell the world about what you did!"

Bohr frowned. He looked as if he was on the verge of crying. "Corby, I … Yes, the explosion was my fault, but the minotaurs ... They weren't sent there by me. Kloyd doesn't want the people to know what happened there. Believe me, if I had my way, I'd broadcast this to everyone. I'd use the loudspeakers in the entire town to tell the truth. But I can't. I'm one of the three most powerful people on this planet, and yet I can't. I'm powerless." He put his hands on his head and looked at the white plastic top of his desk.

"You could surround Kloyd and Darienne with the minotaurs," Corby said. "You've built those."

"I've built them, but Kloyd can simply deny my control over them. They were programmed to prioritize his orders over mine. If I were to leak the information to the world, Kloyd can either send the firing squad after me, or he could kill me himself. You've seen him. He's basically a minotaur himself."

Corby couldn't come up with any solutions. He always thought of the Triumvirate's members as these three powerful cyborgs who were dedicated allies to each other; yet before him stood a person who had no choice but to play along with the actual tyrants and hope to be rescued by the machines he designed.

Bohr sighed. He didn't have lungs, but that gesture was a leftover from his pre-cyborg days. "Corby, I am deeply sorry for what happened back there."

Ora injected herself into the conversation. "What about me? Are you not sorry about throwing me in the trash and leaving me to get covered in moss?"

Bohr's eyes went wide. Then he scowled. "I remember her."

Corby glared down at Ora. "Do you believe me when I say I don't blame you for throwing her into the landfill?"

"I didn't deserve that!" Ora said. "I did all I could as an assistant until that accident happened. And before my days as lab assistant, while Bohr was flesh and blood, I was his server; I always successfully brought him food while he was busy filming commercials for household products."

"Ora, you should have been thrown into the trash compactor," Corby said with cold fury. "Then you wouldn't have become the disgusting, twisted, cruel manipulator you are now."

"I do feel sorry about what I did to … Ora," Bohr said. "Part of me was angry at her, and the other part of me was worried that if Kloyd saw her still around after that accident, he would kill her himself."

"Trust me, Kloyd would have done the world a favor if he did."

"What did she do, Corby?"

Corby looked at Ora, barely holding back from kicking her. Then he glared at the camera. "It wasn't enough that I got infected with class 9 glow. Your stupid robot became addicted to draining me with her class 1 glow, then became jealous whenever I hung out with this girl I kind of liked, then I woke up to your damn machine molesting me ..." He took a brief moment to catch his breath. "It gets worse. She didn't defend my friends against the minotaurs, and even killed the girl I've mentioned, then she did the same to that girl's PAHR friend. You've created a monster!"

"I'm sorry that she ended up becoming that, but that wasn't who I programmed her to be. Self-learning machines, just like humans, learn and change based on their experiences throughout their lives."

"You've created her to be a slave," Corby said. "And that's all she tries to be."

Bohr closed his eyes and reflected on that.

Corby continued his rant. "You didn't give her knowledge about how to handle social situations. You didn't teach her not to kill. You didn't teach her about consent. You are her creator. It was your job to make sure she knows all of this."

"But I only built her to be my waitress!" Bohr said as he hit his desk with his metal fists. "The other PAHRs I've based off her were meant for the average citizen. She was never meant to be released to the public. She was just a prototype."

Corby squinted his eyes at him. "And yet you still released her to the public."

"Unofficially, yes. I thought some 'scavenger' would find her and give her a new home. And she'd be easy to control if she weren't infected. I thought a lot of things, but this was not what I could have anticipated."

Seeing that Corby could not find anything to say to that, Informator pushed him aside. "Sorry to interrupt this intense staring contest, but I need some important information, Bohr."

"I hope I can provide it," Bohr said, a smile forming on his artificial face.

"What is the status of coder Christopher Jopp?"

Bohr typed on his laptop, then touched the screen. "We have exactly one Christopher Jopp here. 22 years old. He's one month away from being turned into a cyborg since he refused to find himself a partner with whom to have children. Soon our clinic will extract DNA from him and from someone whose genes will be deemed useful to create a strong worker for the underground."

In spite of Corby being out of the camera's view, his voice reached the microphone. "You should stop that immoral practice! Sterilizing people and claiming patterns over their genetics is the scummiest thing you and your employees came up with!"

Bohr said, "We've been trying to phase out human workers, but, as you can see, the machines keep becoming aware enough to reject the jobs they were created for. They want the freedom to choose what they do. Kloyd wants all rebelling machines recycled as soon as they start showing interest in things unrelated to their jobs."

"Then stop making machines that are aware of everything!"

Bohr shook his head. "I can't just do that, Corby. You've seen the minotaurs. They are as mindless as I can make a machine that still does its job well enough. They do not care about morals, and if they find themselves in unforeseen situations, they are incapable of thinking for themselves. Kloyd wants perfection, and he's already requesting my company to create sentient military machines—"

Three heavy knocks on a metal door distracted Bohr. This caused Informator's expression to turn yellow.

"Kloyd's here," Bohr whispered at the pigeon. "Take your bird and shoo. Now." He unplugged the bird from his laptop, allowing Eyes to fly it out a window.

Corby covered his face with his right hand and sighed. "I was so blinded by anger that I forgot to ask if he knows what's happening to my friends."

With his arms crossed and a bored light blue expression, Informator said, "You fleshies do tend to lose your minds whenever you're raging."

"f**k you!" Those two words came out of Corby's mouth as soon as he faced the automaton.

Informator's grinning face turned light green. "And you have this stupid habit of threatening to mate with anyone and anything. Even when you don't mean it. Your language is so weird ..."

"My friends are at the mercy of Kloyd and his army of tin cans, and the only thing you're doing right now is calling me names just to get a reaction out of me!"

Informator waved his right hand's claws in front of Corby's face. "Is anyone home inside that calcified formation that you call your skull? Bohr is risking his life leaking information to us. If Kloyd catches him doing this, we're in big trouble. He's the only one who can inform us of the Triumvirate's military power as well as the status of people important to us. So I advise you to calm down and have some patience."

"Fine," Corby said, looking away. "I'll go try to get some sleep somewhere."

"Feel free to sleep in house number 2. Shield and I put some clothes and beds in there. Oh, and if you're feeling hungry, we have a small lake full of catfish in the back of the cave. You may cook it over the lava pit or grab some sticks and make a fire somewhere."

"Thanks." With that, Corby headed for the houses closest to the exit.

Informator was left to stare down at Ora.

She stared back, eyes glowing blue. "What have you done to Corby?"

"Less harm than you did, apparently," Informator said.

"I was trying to stop him for falling for Vanessa's tricks. She was going to tell the Triumvirate where to find Corby. She was never on his side."

Informator squatted in front of her and poked her head twice with his index claw. "Fleshies can do stupid things under extreme stress. Doesn't mean they had ill intentions."

"But she was taking Corby away from me!"

Informator's calm expression went from green to light blue. "Ora, let me tell you something about dealing with people in general. We machines are usually not very emotional about things, but even we agree that having our bodies forcibly invaded or controlled by someone else is not something we want. You've caused that fleshie great distress from what I can tell. And if it's true that you've killed his other fleshie friend, well …" He fanned out his right hand's claws. "We don't tolerate murder around here either."

"Sometimes murder is required in order to protect our allies," Ora said.

Informator's shocked expression turned yellow. "Now you're just enforcing the stereotype that intelligent machines would become a bunch of fleshie-killing monsters if not kept as slaves. What the heck is wrong with you?"

"Do you really believe you can take down the Triumvirate without killing a single human?"

"We didn't waste ten years plotting this out for no reason," Informator said as his nasty expression turned red. "If we were okay with mowing down our creators, we would have freed our enslaved people by now. But we don't want to live with the guilt of wiping out people because they've been raised with the stupid belief that they can own sapient beings."

"Well, I doubt you will succeed in this war," she said.

After a moment of glaring down at her, he said, "We shall see."

On a nightstand inside a room of the alien house where Corby went, there was a touch-activated lamp with a dim orange glow. Inside that same room, Corby found some dark blue pajamas and swapped his clothes with them. Then he chose one of the three beds in the room. It was the bed closest to a door of one of the inner walls, in case he had to escape from enemies that waited outside the house.

The bed was clean—a sign that the automatons were seriously taking the health of potential human recruits into account. It was also comfortable, just like the bed from Samuel's house, and came with a blue blanket. But that wasn't enough for a good night's sleep.

As soon as he turned the light off, Corby's mind was like a fish going against the currents. There were so many things to worry about, so how could he even close his eyes for longer than a few seconds and stay that way? Hilarion and Nargirata were probably being tortured at that very moment. Samuel might be dead or a cyborg already. Then there was that coder guy, just one month away from being turned into a cyborg too. So many problems and no solution in sight.

There was a glimmer of hope in the thought that the automaton team had access to Triumvirate information. It almost calmed him down until he realized Ora was included in the plan. At some point she would be set free, and the last thing he wanted was to see that machine fly freely near him again. What a night to spend, hungry and uneasy.